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 Poet
ACT Theatre, March
6, 2000
Biography
Selected Works
Links
Biography
Anne Carson is a writer with two desks. In the literal sense she uses
one desk for classical scholarship and another for creative writing, but
in her mind she marries these desks to produce original essays and astounding
poetry that break and bend the rules in ways that continually surprise
her readers. In her book Economy of the Unlost, for instance, she
explores the idea of a “language economy” by aligning the writings
of the Greek lyric poet Simonides and the modern Romanian poet and Holocaust
survivor Paul Celan; through this technique Carson offers an explanation
for what is lost when words are wasted and who profits when words are
saved. She believes both poets stand in a state of alienation between
two worlds, but through her “two desked-self,” she deftly brings
the worlds of these poets together in a writing style that echoes the
lyricism of poetry.
As both a classicist and a poet, she invents new forms and transforms
old ones to blur the boundaries between genres. In her own words, “Form
is a rough approximation of what the facts are doing. Their activity more
than their surface appearance. I mean, when we say that form imitates
reality or something like that it sounds like an image. I’m saying
it’s more like a tempo being covered, like a movement within an event
or thing.” This loose line between her poetry and prose transcends
all her work, and is most apparent in her books Short Talks, where
she condenses the form of essay into a prose poem and Autobiography
of Red, a novel-in-verse.
Unlike many contemporary poets, Carson abhors self-involvement in her
writing. While a poem like “The Glass Essay” makes references
to her life, Carson does not see these moments as any more important or
meaningful than the other “facts” contained in the poem. "I
find the idea of the essay as self-exploration kind of creepy. Because
when you write an essay you’re giving a gift, it seems to me. You’re
giving this grace as the ancients would say. A gift shouldn’t turn
back into the self and stop there," she explains. "That’s
why facts are so important, because a fact is something already given.
It’s a gift from the world or from wherever you found it. And then
you take that gift and you do something with it, and you give it again
to the world or to some person, and that keeps it going."
Anne Carson is the Director of Graduate Studies in Classics at McGill
University. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1996
Lannan Award, a 1997 Pushcart Prize for poetry, and a nomination for the
1998 National Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in Canada.
Selected
Works
Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay (1986)
Goddesses And Wise Women (1992)
Glass, Irony and God (1995)
Plainwater: Essays and Poetry (1996)
Autobiography of Red (1998)
Economy of the Unlost (1999)
The Beauty of the Husband : A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (2001)
Web
Site Links
Salon.com book review
of Men in the Off Hours
Reading group guide
to The Beauty of the Husband
Short interview
with Carson
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